How To Change Nothing (and Everything) in Ministry Right Now
Amid a global pandemic, everything is different. From our work location to our Sunday worship experience to our available groceries, almost every aspect of life is different.
As leaders of organizations and churches we’ve been asking ourselves how we can possibly manage to change everything we do at neck-breaking speed. We strategize and plan and learn new platforms and tools, and we devour newly-published best practices to help us adjust.
What if we’re missing the more important question, the question that reminds us that we already know how to do this? We’ve been trained and equipped to lead and minister as intentionally hospitable leaders, and the current climate we’re living in doesn’t have to change that reality. Instead, let’s ask:
How do we change nothing?
How do we continue to be who we fundamentally are, particularly as it relates to our organizational mission, vision, values and culture?
For The Life Christian Church in West Orange and Paramus New Jersey, where I serve as Lead Pastor, this is a particularly challenging question because our mission, vision, values and culture are overlaid with a simple but implication laden word: “Hospitality.”
Our philosophical operating system is hospitality.
But how can we practice hospitality in a world where everyone is mandated to quarantine in their own homes? If we cannot figure out how to practice hospitality in this present inhospitable environment, then we can no longer be who we are. And that is unacceptable.
In my book The Hospitable Leader; Create Environments Where People And Dreams Flourish I define a hospitable leader as someone who “creates environments of welcome where moral leadership can more effectively influence an ever-expanding diversity of people.” Hospitable leadership is a worldview, a mindset, an approach.
Hospitable leaders know how to create a sense of home
Thankfully it can be practiced in many different ways – including as we are learning – an all online ministry. Consequently, as we have changed virtually everything as to how we do ministry during this season, we have not changed who we are. We have learned how to create environments of welcome through new technologies and mediums and are influencing a greater diversity of people than ever before. We are looking at this season as we always have, through the lens of hospitality.
We believe that people desperately need to experience hospitable leadership more now than ever.
The good news? It’s entirely possible, even as we conduct ministry online.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be exploring the ways we can change nothing and demonstrate the kind of hospitable leadership that breaks down walls and dares to dream and welcome strangers.
Today, let’s share the first of Five Welcomes that comprise hospitable leadership.
The First Welcome: People need to feel home while at home
It is possible that never before have people spent so much time at home yet felt less at home. I am not suggesting that our physical homes are inhospitable, but that the atmospheric conditions of the world writ large are cold and constantly encroaching. Pandemic. A daily deluge of terrible news. Sickness. Loss. Grief. Fear. Uncertainty. Loneliness. Division. I like to say that home is where the heart is warm and that hospitable leaders are experts in warming hearts. So how do we warm people's hearts when we cannot invite them to physical environments of welcome? When we cannot physically gather? When the operative phrase for societal survival is social distancing?
A primary way to warm hearts is to let people know how much we care for them and what they are experiencing. If there's ever been a need for leaders to find ways to say “I care” and show it by what they actually do, this is it. And we have discovered – along with many of you – that this can be done in an all-online reality. We can and must warm hearts through every available means.
So our very diverse team is having regular but essential meetings that begin with exploring “in your interactions with people inside and outside of our congregation what is your sense of what a diversity of people are experiencing and feeling?” Then we are designing ministry and methodologies to address people's felt and real needs. For instance:
Our weekend programming and teaching series gently shout “we feel you.”
We have set up 24-hour Prayer and Help Lines.
We have fostered community by increasing the number of active small groups and offering all of our groups online.
Our ministry teams are meeting – virtually of course – more than ever, though many of them are not able to physically serve at this time. They meet because the people need each other.
And we have stood up 16 hours a day of need meeting online programming that anyone can connect to from anywhere. TLCC TV includes daily programs for children and parents stuck at home – live daily devotionals - worship hours, and a lot of fun programs like exercise programs and story hours. I do a regular live show called “ask me anything.” We are having a great time doing this and the grateful response has been overwhelming.
I love the story of Jesus joining those two guys on the road to Emmaus. (Luke 24) They were discussing the crazy and confusing news of the moment and Jesus just showed up and began to walk with them. Later they said that they should have recognized Him because their hearts were burning in them while He was with them.
We must find ways in every season to meet our people wherever they are on their journey – to walk with them – to teach them – and to touch that place in their heart that burns when they feel at home. Only then can we hope to lead them well. How might you help your own community meet the need to feel home while at home?