A Door Set Open, by Peter Steinke

Chapter 5 – The Making of a Mission Culture

1.   The church’s mission is a huge piece to digest…easier said than done!  Steinke initiates this discussion with the need to know what direction one is headed…to have a destination…an orientation.  He then moves into a discussion of “mission drift,” limping along without a focus…an apparent affliction of many congregations today.  Look again at Steinke’s list of drifting symptoms…

Can you recall examples where you felt the church was in the midst of such “drifting?”

2.  “Mission is the nature and purpose of the church, not some list of qualifiers.  Because God has a mission, a church arises.  Apart from mission, the church is meaningless.  The mission has churches.” 

How do these statements compare with the perception of the average church member today?  Where might there be agreement or disagreement? 

3.  Steinke notes how issues of survival challenge us to examine our self-understanding as people of God, asking:  Who are we?  What is God calling us to be? 

How has St. Mark changed over the past two decades, and how do we understand our mission today?

4.  “If the gospel isn’t transforming you,” N.T. Wright asks, “how do you know that it will transform anything else?”  “People who work for a clear mission in the church and for the wider world need to be experiencing transformation in their own lives.”

How do we learn to tend to this focus in fresh ways, especially when we’ve been a part of the church for so long?

5.  “Again and again, we have to explore why we come together.  Congregations need to continue to review who they are and how they will respond.”  Let’s try on Steinke’s follow-up questions for size:

What are we trying to be?  What is our calling at this time and in this place?  Can we make a difference?  Is there a purpose for our presence?

A Door Set Open, by Peter Steinke

Chapter 4 – The Challenge of Change

1.  Steinke begins with a difficult and poignant question, “How will the church find leaders for emotional systems caught in a rising tide of change?”  He then discusses the relationship between change and emotionality, noting that, “Change will touch off a burst of emotional energy.”  “People in the church can make the same wrong assumptions as some economists…we think that if we make a few sensible changes, harmony will hold.  But animal spirits find their way into any system.”  Steinke illustrates these animal spirits with the example of the misguided senior pastor and the various reactions within the congregation.

Where did this pastor err grievously?  Where did the congregation err grievously?  (Yes, stuff like this really happens!)

2.  Change is hard for everyone, especially congregations. 

“Now, suddenly, with steep changes happening in our society, congregations have to ask themselves whether they are responding to a world that no longer exists and whether they have the sort of leadership required to shift to new understanding and practices. Surely, the priestly work is always needed, but now, especially now, clergy may need to become advocates for adaptive change.”

“Ask yourselves—does your congregation need a more prophetic ministry?  Do you need a more visionary type of ministry?”

3.  Rightly so, Steinke casts doubt upon the myriad invitations to participate in transformational leadership training seminars.  (I get several of these each week in the mail and promptly round-file them!)  “Transformation is a process. It may take five years, a generation, or perhaps even forty wilderness years to see its effects. Early in the process it isn’t possible to tell how transformed a church might become. So impatient and anxious, well-intended change agents turn a decade into an hour.”

Why is our religious culture so gullibly transfixed by such transformation magic…and what is the antidote?

4.  Steinke notes that the success rate for a turnaround church is about one in four.  “People can squelch urgency by dragging out possible negative results and impending doom. If leaders want to
implement change, they are placed under suspicion. With fear hovering in the community, the coalition of change agents that needs to develop doesn’t know how to get started, or they prefer add-ons rather than substantive changes. The challenge of change for a congregation on a steady downward slope is precisely to redefine and redirect its mission.”  As Kathleen Norris states, “Their challenge is to go on living thankfully, contributing liberally, and living graciously.”

How does this last statement serve to guide St. Mark and other congregations toward effective mission?  How does each of these three responses positively redirect our energy and efforts toward change?

A Door Set Open, by Peter Steinke

Chapter 3 – So That You May Hope Again

1.  Steinke’s stated intention in this chapter is to “look at hope in the context of God’s people in exile, a time of dislocation and near despair, like ours.”  To that end, we receive an excellent, although truncated, biblical history lesson.  The Babylonian captivity is paramount to Jewish history, as demonstrated by the deep involvement of its prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. 

In review, what series of circumstances led to this predicament and how did the exiles learn to find hope in the midst of exile?

2.  Steinke points out the necessity of dialectical thinking here, citing Brueggemann that, “In a broken world, hope and lament are partners.  Hope does not need to silence the rumbling of crisis to be hope.”  Steinke adds that, “The paradoxical nature of faith as exile and homecoming defines the Christian in the world.”

How to you relate to these statements?

3.  Church leaders today likewise face the temptations of denial, despair, and magic.  Take time to examine how each of these temptations poses a threat to the health and vitality of today’s congregations and church leaders.

4.  “To many, religion is a good thing, as long as it provides personal comfort and meets individual needs. Consequently, they want the church to double the offer—to give them not only a message of salvation but also the elements of a benefits plan, such as self-improvement methods, life-coping skills, satisfaction enhancement, and stress reduction.” 

How does this “double offer” expectation lead to the dark side, namely…the three temptations of denial, despair, and magic?  How can the church communicate and extend genuine hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ in today’s shifting culture?

A Door Set Open, by Peter Steinke

Chapter 2 – Emotional Systems & the New Anxiety

1.  Boy, am I ever familiar with this chapter’s material!  And if you’ve spent some portion of your adult life ensconced in church life (i.e., politics), chances are, you are, too.  We’re right at home with this discussion involving emotions and anxiety.  Steinke describes congregations as “emotional systems”…quite prepared to engage in self-deceit, when threatened.

“When the challenge of change confronts a congregation, members’ survival brains surely will excite their emotional forces. Supervised by the amygdala (the anxiety alarm in the brain), a rapid line of defense takes over in threatening situations. The amygdala functions to protect an organism by:

• appraising danger and acting faster than consciousness,

• operating apart from awareness,

• eliminating any set of options that might delay action,

• generalizing for rapid reaction,

• pairing an outside threat with any previous thought, feeling, or prior experience.”

What situations or circumstances might evoke such responses?

2.  Steinke then discusses homeostasis, “to function in the same way,” hanging on to the familiar.  Must be a Lutheran thing!  This “persistence of form,” as Friedman defines it, can be explained by: A) emotional barriers, B) imaginative gridlock, and C) resistance.  (My, my, my…where should we begin?)

A.  “An artificial limit born of mythology and preserved by anxiety.”  Why are churches susceptible to emotional barriers?    What promotes their popularity and duration?

B.  “Friedman’s second concept involves human survival instincts. During anxious periods, what is most needed—imagination—is most unavailable. Reacting supersedes thoughtfulness. Anxiety locks up the imagination and misplaces the key.”  Again, what are some examples that come to mind?

C.  “Emotional resistance to change is powerful. In our minds is this formula: Stability equals safety. The amygdala is keyed to suddenness and newness, for either could be threatening. Since the amygdala is ready to react if something is strange, new, or novel, resistance serves as a defensive action, usually apparent in sabotaging behavior. Friedman called dealing with resistance ‘the key to the kingdom.’ Minimal reaction to the resisting positions of others, whether exhibited in apathy or aggression, is “the key.

If the leader stays the course without compromising, abandoning, or corrupting the goal, good outcomes, though not guaranteed, are more apt to happen.”

Where have you seen such leadership demonstrated wisely and effectively for the good of the congregation?

3.  “A natural response of any emotional system is to return to its previous state when challenged and strained. After the initial steps toward change, a leader will therefore encounter resistance, mostly from those who are emotionally invested. As Friedman noted, such resistance is predictable: ‘Most theories of leadership recognize the problem of mistakes, but there is a deeper systemic phenomenon that occurs when leaders do precisely what they are supposed to do—lead.’ People who can differentiate well—act maturely—will arouse anxiety in less mature people.

“The ensuing sabotage is sometimes organized and sometimes just mindless opposition. The challenge to the leader is to self-regulate in the midst of anxious reactivity. Being focused on principle and direction, the leader does not get caught up on rash behaviors or cruel comments. As a last resort, reactors will demonize the leader.”  (Would this a good time to recruit new Council members?!) 

Like every pastor of 30 years in the trenches, I could write a book on this subject…and it’s not pretty.  I see and hear efforts of sabotage all the time…some of it unintentional, and much of it quite intentional (but never admitted).

How can pastors & congregations work to counter sabotage?

A Door Set Open, by Peter Steinke

Chapter 1 – There Once Was a World

1.  In many ways, Peter Steinke picks up where Douglas John Hall left off…namely, the sad but inevitable demise of American mainline churches.  Steinke assigns this change to a confluence of factors, noting the sea change is external or contextual. 

For purposes of discussion, let’s review/discuss each of these factors or forces briefly:

- Postmodern Philosophy

- Dogmatic Atheism

- Supermodernity

- Science and Religion

- The Neuro Society

- The Ghost of Gnosticism

- Therapeutic Dominance

2.  Steinke notes that the cultural response in spiritual things has shifted away from churches, which are challenged by the astonishing pace of change in the world.  Steinke believes this constitutes a rich opportunity for the church.  God has set the door open to the future, arriving in the person of Jesus Christ. 

Where is all this “dislocation” taking us as Christians today?

What new “opportunities” for mission do you envision before us?

Waiting for Gospel, by Douglas John Hall

Waiting for Gospel

Chapter 13

A Latter-Day Kierkegaardian Visits a Mega-church

Douglas John Hall saved his best critique for last!  As he recalls aloud his mega-church experience in various stages of confusion and repulsion, he invites us to reflect and respond in earnestness.  I shall simply quote his conclusion and invite us all to consider his departing questions:

“The point, however, is to ask what is being offered in these new temples (and our duller, less successful, and often nearly defunct churches)—not how it is packaged! What is it, and how does it stack up against the Bible, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Tillich, Ruether, Soelle—and (sic!) Kierkegaard. And others. Concretely speaking, in view of the four previous observations, I ask the following four questions:

“First, can Christians in North America today affirm and encourage the much beleaguered and belittled human individual without, in the process, implying that the lifestyle, together with the racial, sexual, economic and other assumptions and pursuits of persons shaped by our consumer society, is just what is ordered by the Master of the Universe?

“Second, how can Christian communities be hospitable without reducing faith to sentimentality, mystery to ordinariness, truth to slogan, hope to optimism, love to luv?

“Third, is it possible to perceive and present Jesus as the representative and revealer of true God without making of him all the God of God there is?

“Fourth, how shall we keep the cross at the center without turning God into a transcendent Shylock and relegating humankind and all the rest of creation to the status of a failed experiment?”

Waiting for Gospel, by Douglas John Hall

Chapter 12 – Many Churches * Many Faiths * One Planet

1.  Hall introduces this chapter with the heading, “The ambiguity of religion in the light of the new world-consciousness.”  He illustrates with the words, “Religion Kills,” which were used as graffiti on the outer wall of the Presbyterian College in Montreal.  A letter to the editor of the International Herald Tribune echoed a similar sentiment, citing “religious fanaticism and extreme belief systems.”  How has the rapid expansion of the global community forever changed the way we view religion and its role in our culture? 

2.  How do you respond to Hall’s statement, “Is there in this extended Christian experience of ecumenical dialogue any wisdom to be gained that is applicable to the larger diversity of religious faiths?”

3.  Next, Hall asks, “How Can Christian Ecumenical Experience Facilitate Interfaith Dialogue?”  He responds with four areas of ecumenical Christian experience from which certain principles may be deduced.  Briefly review and discuss each:

(1) That the well being of the world is the foundational rationale of ecumenical endeavor;

(2) That particularity profoundly appreciated is our entrée to a deeper universality;

(3) That the quest for power always impairs ecumenical discourse;

(4) That hospitality towards and dialogue with other traditions does not diminish but can in fact enhance one’s knowledge and appreciation of one’s own tradition.

“While keeping our eyes wide open to the conflicts that religion inspires or is caused to sanction, we should never lose sight of the blessings that all humankind’s great faiths, at their best, wish to bestow upon the world.”  What are these blessings for us?