Link to Summary of Previous CE Committee articles plus related resources

Below is a summary of the first three parts of this four part mini-series by Neil MacQueen.
They appeared in past Email Newsletters for Rotation.org

Click here for Part Four -- The Wrap Up Articles in the Series

Summary of Articles 1, 2 & 3

If you're NOT going to read this carefully or are in denial about the general health of CE in many churches --please-- don't email me! These days I have a tough time hiding my incredulity. This is a 'think piece,' not a pronouncement. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this think piece, feel free to email me at sundaysoft@ee.net <><Neil

This articles is the compilation of several smaller pieces I wrote for the rotation.org email newsletters in the Spring of 2000. Please note, the three articles were very short, I've compiled them here and added some thoughts.

I suggested that the concept of CE Committees as we know them may have outlived their usefulness, -a relic of the 1950's. As expected, I received many emails.

Let's start with what perhaps we can all agree on: Churches need group decision-making and accountability.

But what FORM and structure should those groups take? More to the point: Is a CE Committee the right way to run a CE program?

The average CE committee is responsible for too much and given too little staff or budget to accomplish it ---let alone being made a priority.

Ever experience I've had in the church indicates that serious change requires FOCUS and CREATIVITY. I cannot think of one example where such work was accomplished by a CE committee. Most CE committees are ill-equipped to provide such thinking or time. "New Business" is always the last item on the agenda when everyone is ready to go home. (Notice how even our committee vocabulary betrays a corporate way of doing ministry: "new business"). Each month 1/3 of the members don't even bother to come. Their excuses may be legitimate, but the results are unacceptable.

Many CE committees are nothing more than "boards of directors" who oversee a sprawling program few entirely grasp or participate entirely in. This is true even in small churches. The nursery people are making decisions about the youth retreat, the teachers have to ask permission to paint a wall (there goes three months) and so on. These problems are often compounded by a lack of leadership and proper management. I once served on a CE Committee whose chair wasn't even in town for more than 8 months of the year! Neither did that chair set foot in any of the classrooms or fellowship groups. Yet this was not considered strange.

As a software distributor, I'm shocked the churches that order curriculum and software a mere week or two before they need it. And the rush for resources after August 20th every year is almost comical if it doesn't break your heart. Where is the planning?

Such last minute haphazard approach to CE is a symptom of malaise. Indeed, many volunteers have become rather fatalistic about CE. They don't expect much from it. Didn't as kids, don't as adults. At this point, I'm not going to dredge up the many and sundry problems of CE programs and committees. You can make your own list!

The level of inertia, mediocrity, and head-in-the-sand thinking many churches and individuals experience or put up with is astounding. As Bill Easum, church change guru puts it:

Churches are about the last place left in this world where good hearted people will put up with totally dysfunctional people. Most people in small churches are good to the core. They would rather be nice to people rather than hold them accountable.

Many in the 'changing church' movement are suggesting a movement away from neglectful, uninspiring adminstrative committees and toward a division of labor into small groups or 'cell groups.' Most importantly....these cell groups are invested with THE POWER TO DREAM.....and the POWER TO PROCEED. They have the blessing to implement, not merely the power to 'report back.'

In this type of leadership model, the CE committee's nursery coordinator and the youth leader don't get to vote on changing over to a Rotation Model for the elementary school program. They might be asked for input, but it's not the area which the church has asked them to lead. The Youth Group is allowed to schedule its own retreats without having to jump through hoops. The Wednesday Night program doesn't answer to a committee filled with non-Wednesday night volunteers.

These groups don't even necessarily need permission from the church council or session for most decisions. In all my years working in CE, I have yet to meet a church Session that could improve on what core groups of people had already decided. Yes, there are some decisions that coucils DO need to make. The best decision they can make, however, is to empower volunteers with the reigns of leadership, not the bit of control.

A CE staff person (paid or unpaid) coordinates, initiates, recruits, resources between the various cells working in their own areas and reports to the council on these activities. Two or three yearly 'super-meetings' may be necessary...and then only between leaders.

How very un-Presbyterian of me to suggest such a power-dispersing model. But those pastors and elders who think they are really achieving oversight and excercising authority by MEETING, VOTING and APPROVING are sadly out of touch. Quite frankly, such activities are irrelevant to 98% of what goes on in the life of the church. What leaders are called to do is LEAD, not sit in judgement. Their time would be better spent meeting with cell groups in the church to find out how they can RAISE UP the work. Their time would be better spent assessing what NEW CELLS are needed within the congregation to do old and new ministry. Their time would be better spent speaking on behalf of the congregation. Ok....there are financial, personnel and facility questions. But there again, many of those activities don't require 12 ordained people and 95% of that work is decided in smaller groups before the meeting. ((I'm sure by now some readers are getting quite defensive now that I've rattled the 'church council cage.' But I've spent years and years on such councils/sessions so there's no talking me out of this point of view. The definitions and activities of LEADERSHIP have to change in our congregations.))

How do you change? The difficult truth is that you may first have to change the personnel. They run it like they do because they like it that way. Some are afraid to give up control, or are afraid they might have to get more involved. Christian Education Committees and church councils are wonderful places for staff or chairpeople who think of themselves as C.E.O's and adminstrators. For that CE chair who's only around 8 months a year or volunteer who's not really involved in the program, the CE committee provides them with the appearance of control and commitment. Budgets get approved, reports get filed, you hear what others are doing and that passes for a commitment to CE.

If we are to break the bad habits and results of the past, we need to rethink the structures which have created and reinforced them.

 

Case Study in CE Committee Change

Certain experiences in my life have shaped my thinking about CE and committees tremendously. Let me tell you about one freeing experience particular to this subject and to Rotation Model.

The year was 1989 and I was attending the first CE committee at the church where I had just been hired. The two biggest discussions that night were -I kid you not- "what kind of cookies to serve the kids on Sunday so the crums don't dirty the carpet' and 'what to do about the church library.' It was August and not one peep about the Fall curriculum other than "it had been bought." (fyi....I asked for a show of hands of the number of people who had checked out a book from the library in the last year. None went up.)

The very same committee that was discussing cookie crums and books nobody checked-out was the SAME CE Committee which a year later created and implemented the FIRST Workshop Rotation Model at the Presbyterian Church of Barrington Illinois in 1990. The SAME people.

What was different?

We made two crucial changes:

1) The committee gave decision making power to the leaders (both paid and volunteer). This included weekly/monthly operational decisions, and financial decisions. The leaders communicated as they needed, which was often in short, task-oriented conversations.

2) The committee concerned itself with the overall health and direction of the program, not the details of its operation. This created time for envisioning and brainstorming. The committee would often focus its talented people in several task-oriented groups who had the power to make and implement decisions, rather than wasting precious time and enthusiasm in 'committees of the whole.'

One "minor" change we made:

Once an overall vision and plan began to evolve, we spread the ministry workload and 'envisioning load' between different groups rather than trying to operate as one Christian education committee for our 900 member church. There were coordinating-level discussions, but we knew that each ministry area had specific needs that would go unmet if we assigned them all to one group. I'm now in a much smaller church and the workload isn't that much different. You still have to plan just as much for 6 kids in a class as you do for 12 or 15.

The result of creating these 'invested groups' was a revitalized adult education and the creation of 3 new fellowship groups and a family ministry.

 

This experience and the subsequent Rotation movement it has spawned has led me to conclude that there is no lack of creativity or new ideas in the church...

It's all just buried under denial, held back by defensive thinking, bled by lack of empowerment and permission, hamstrung by old governing habits, tethered by fear of failure in the public eye, and voted on by persons whose last creative idea was back in 1978.

Bill Easum is one of the most respected church change authors in the U.S. He has written extensively on the need for change and factors resisting it.

He writes:

The actions of thousands of church members across North America have led me to the following conclusion....

Church members resist change because they are not deep enough in love with Jesus Christ that they are passionate about sharing such love with others. It‘s that simple. I know many psychological reasons are given for resisting change. However, the scriptures give only one viable answer for Christians... "perfect love casts out all fear." (1 John 4:14) We are not in love enough with Jesus.

It has been my experience that when people are deeply in love with Jesus Christ their longing for others to experience such love overcomes a multitude of fear. When people reach this level of spiritual maturity, they do not resists change if the change helps spread the Gospel. Like Paul, they are willing to become all things to all people so that "they might win some."Christians have no choice in the matter. It's in their DNA.

--Bill Easum, Senior Consultant, 21st Century Strategies, www.easum.com

In that first year our committee took the time to discover and discuss our passion for sharing Jesus Christ with our kids. That passion, and the talent to act on it, was buried under discussions about cookies and the minutae of running a program. It lay untapped for lack of a compelling vision and specific plan (not one of those hokey 'mission statements'). Entrusted to several small teams, the various parts of our CE program began to flower. That energy and the success it created became a rising tide across the congregation.

Who is the author - Neil MacQueen?

Neil is a Presbyterian minister with over 23 years experience in Christian education in a congregational setting. He is one of the original authors of the Workshop Rotation Model and now works full-time developing software for Christian education. Neil writes and speaks on CE issues, in addition to writing the email newsletter and articles for www.rotation.org.

 

Click here for Part Four -- The Wrap Up Article in this series on CE Committees

Link to More Articles at Rotation.org

Link to more Articles on CE and on Computers in CE at Neil's software site

Link to other Articles at Bill Easum's website:

What Churches are Teaching Me About Permission-Giving Churches -- Part One --

What Churches are Teaching Me About Permission-Giving Churches --Part Two --
First, 99% of all core values come from an individual pastor, not a committee. There are no examples in scripture where God works through a group of people. God has worked through a donkey, or a heathen like Cyrus, but never a committee.

The Small Church
Small churches are about the last place left in this world where good hearted people will put up with totally dysfunctional people. Most people in small churches are good to the core. They would rather be nice to people rather than hold them accountable

The Three Keys of Strategic Action: A Case Study.
A leverage point is the one thing, that if changed, makes changing everything else easier.

Innovating "on the Fly"
...Clue #6: Listen to your instinct, not your critics.

Articles from the Changing Church movement:
Fact: 85-90% of protestant churches across the nation are failing. The way we were trained and called to do ministry will not take us into the future.

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