Saturday, June 6, 1998

Churches embrace new ways of doing God's business

By SUSAN HOGAN ALBACH / Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

The pensive faces told the story. Sixty people were hovered over thick binders, desperate to slash $100,000 from an already streamlined budget.

In the past, a committee might have made the decisions behind closed doors, creating hard feelings when the cuts were announced. But this time, those most affected had a direct hand in the outcome.

At work was Minnesota's United Methodist Annual Conference, which has reshaped its staff into teams. Each team -- administration, discipleship, communications and so on -- cut its own portion of the budget until the overall bottom line was nearly reached.

The process was intense but fair, everyone said.

In steepled institutions, business parlance and practices have become part of a growing vernacular as church leaders ponder downsizing, niche marketing, even customer service. Minnesota's Methodist Conference and Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville have been pioneers in restructuring work forces into teams.

It's an approach businesses have used for years with mixed results.

"It's a whole new way of thinking," said ShirleyTeig, 63, executive director of Church Innovations in St. Paul. "In the past, congregations haven't seen themselves as businesses."

The change in how decisions are made reflects a new approach slowly taking hold in churches and denominations around the country. After years of membership and financial losses, mainline denominations are embracing the methods and philosophies of corporate America in hopes of reversing the decline.

Since 1960, the United Methodist Church had lost more than 2 million members, the United Church of Christ nearly 800,000 members and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) more than a half million.

Those losses have been cut significantly in the past three years, but the denominations are still grappling for ways to be more effective, efficient and relevant.

"A lot of denominations are looking for a quick fix, a magic pill, so that they don't really have to change," said Alan Klaas, a church consultant and researcher from Kearney, Mo. "They want to develop programs and pass it down to the congregations. Well, that top-down approach doesn't work anymore."

Terri Elton of Prince of Peace is upfront with those from around the country who flock to her 9,000-member church for workshops on the changing church.

"I won't kid you," she tells them. "It's very messy at first, switching to this type of structure -- and it takes a lot of time."

Elton, 33, has been instrumental in helping her church reshape its 30-plus staff members into nine ministry teams -- some with awkward names. Custodians are part of the "facilities and grounds team" and receptionists are on the "communication and information system team."

The influence of business philosophies is evident in the church's bookstore. Alongside Bibles and Sunday school books are titles such as "Jesus, C.E.O." and "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies."

"We're doing what Jesus did," Elton said. "He formed a team of apostles. Then he equipped them for ministry, took off and they changed the world."

Churches still tend to operate according to 1940s thinking, Klaas said. In that era, churches played a more formidable role in society. Members looked to churches to serve their needs. Ministry was considered the pastor's task.

But the churches that thrive in the future, Klaas contends, will talk less about membership, more about discipleship. Believers will look to churches to equip them for service in the world. Every member -- not just pastors -- will a have a role in ministry.

Although their roles and authority differ, every staff member's work at Prince of Peace is considered a ministry, whether a janitor or a pastor.

"The benefits of doing ministry together is so much greater than by yourself," said Elton, who added that the church's staff "used to have a lot of Lone Rangers."

Under the new system, Prince of Peace requires all of its employees to be active members of the church. In the past, it hadn't mattered whether, say, the secretary belonged to this church or to another one.

Elton said this was difficult for some employees and led to a turnover in staff. But she believes the change was necessary to reach the church's overall goals.

"We are trying to create a culture of disciples -- where our staff models and lives out what it means to live out their faith in the world," she said. "That includes a commitment to this faith community."

"The new thinking is that 'It's not just me and God, but me and God and the person down the street,' " said Glenda Eoyang, a business consultant who advised the Methodist Conference. "If you want to help the person down the street, teams are a good structure for fostering that."

The team approach isn't the answer to everyone's prayers. Its success in churches is mixed, just as it has been in the business world.

Pax Christi Catholic Community in Eden Prairie, Minn., tried the approach for three years. But now it's moving away from that model because it was too cumbersome and ineffective.

"I believe in teams, but our initial experience was less than satisfactory," said Jerry Roth, 48, parish director.

Roth said most of the problems resulted from the lack of clarity about staff members' roles. Resolving conflict also was difficult.

"The investment of time seemed too heavy in trying to make it work," he said. "I think there's a lot of baggage that comes with teams that doesn't need to be there."

Tony Gunderson quit his custodian's job at Prince of Peace partly because of frustration with the team approach. His job was complicated by communication breakdowns between teams.

"It was also hard to think of vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms as a ministry," said Gunderson, 26, of Apple Valley, Minn., who still attends the church.

George Bullard, a national consultant from South Carolina, warns that many religious bodies still are operating as hierarchies under the guise of a team system.

"It's sort of the 'in thing' in church circles to call what you're doing a team," he said. "A lot of times it's just a renaming of the old divisions and departments."

But the Rev. John Strommen said he believes the team approach is "unleashing the gifts for ministry" among members of his congregation. He prefers it to the old committee system which, he said, tended to legislate ministry.

"It's been a big transformation for me, too," said Strommen, 39, senior pastor of Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Minn. "I have to be less controlling, less of the belief that because I have four years of seminary training that I have all the right answers."

That lessening of divisions between clergy and laity is what Terry Krinke, 59, a businessman from Roseville, Minn., most appreciated at the Methodist budget meeting. Under the old system, he said, people often went along with the clergy because of their theological training and position.

"This is so much better than before," he said. "I could be very vocal about my opinions without it damaging the relationship I have with the church and the people in it."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)