Building our new church facility went without a hitch. Our first service in the new building, however, was another matter.
For over a year, the board had talked about changing the way we took offerings. Our practice had been for members to place their offerings in a box on the wall. We were convinced we needed to start passing the plate.
We knew that would make some people uncomfortable, so we decided to begin passing the plate when we moved into the new church building. With so many other changes, who would notice one more?
The morning of our first service in the new building, I received a phone call from John, a former board member.
"Is what I heard true?" he asked. "Are you planning to take an offering this morning?"
I told him we were, and he went ballistic. "If you do," he said, "I'll interrupt the service and call you to account!"
We had violated a fundamental principle in successful small church leadership: we had overlooked the congregation's need to know.
Communication is vital to leadership in any church. A certain style of communication, however, is especially important in the small congregation.
A family feeling
People in a small church expect a family style of communication.
I learned that the hard way. My first year here, I left on my vacation without informing the congregation. (I cleared the vacation with the elders, and they knew how to reach me in an emergency.) I had considered announcing my absence the Sunday before we left but decided I had a right to some privacy.
When I returned, one of the elders took me aside.
"Why didn't you let the congregation know you would be gone?" he asked.
"I didn't think they needed to know," I said.
"Well, Miriam told me she tried to get in touch with you several times last week and would have liked to have known that you were gone. Next time tell the congregation."
In a large church the combination of size and complexity make it impossible for members to know everything happening in the church. In the small congregation, however, it's not only possible, it's expected. Such matters are "family business."
How the network works
It's important to find the communication centers in a culture.
"I like to visit small towns and find the place where the important business is transacted," a guest speaker told me. "Usually it's in the local restaurant."
That's the way it is in Green Valley. Every morning at 6 a.m. the farmers gather at the diner. A few actually eat breakfast, but most nurse a cup of coffee while they update events in town.
"Hey, Joe, did you hear that Bobby and his wife split up last week?"
"No, but someone told me he started attending AA meetings."
In a church, communication centers may be in the choir with its cross-section of ages and socioeconomic groups, or in boards and committees.
I used to get frustrated over how much time we "wasted" during board meetings. Before addressing our agenda, we had to listen to the latest crop report or an update on the health of someone's mother. In time I realized this "gossip" was as important as the official agenda. They were passing information down the pipeline and maintaining relationships.
If I press committees to ignore these preliminaries and stick to business, they become frustrated because they feel excluded from the informational loop. More important, I cut myself off from a valuable source of pastoral information. This seemingly irrelevant conversation allows me to "keep my ear to the tracks," listening for the rumble of approaching trouble or the first signals of those needing pastoral care.
Getting used to a new idea
I once asked an auto dealer why it was so hard to get him to tell me the price of a car I had already decided to purchase. He kept changing the subject, wasting time talking about the weather or features of the car I hadn't asked about.
"If we don't talk for at least fifteen minutes," he confided, "the customer usually won't buy the car, no matter how interested he or she is."
All the preliminaries, most important being the test drive, are necessary to give the customer time to warm up to the purchase. People need time to feel right about most new ideas.
Our mistake when changing to passing the plates: we didn't give people time to warm up to the idea. The man who threatened to disrupt our service didn't follow through on his promise, but he did leave the church a few weeks later and started attending another church, ironically, a church that passes an offering plate each Sunday.
The issue with him wasn't how we took the offering; it was how we communicated.
This man wasn't the only one who felt that way. While most of the church's members were good-natured about the change, several mentioned they would have preferred to know about it in advance. We had failed to respect their need to know.
In Create Your Own Future, Lyle Schaller warns, "Most normal people need time to talk themselves into supporting a new idea. Therefore periodic progress reports from the long-range planning committee can minimize the surprises encountered by members when the final report is released."
Communication is most effective when it is incremental. A secretive approach keeps the project under wraps until the unveiling of the final plan. Leaders then deluge members with information the people have not had time to digest and inform them of changes they didn't expect. People don't like being surprised.
The grapevine
To get the message out about proposed innovations, we must connect with those who exercise influence. The church's communications network is made up of both "transmitters" and "receivers."
Transmitters disseminate information. People inevitably call them when something happens. Sylvia is a transmitter in our church. Recently she called me about another member who was scheduled for cancer surgery the following week. Sylvia detailed the woman's diagnosis, what hospital she would be in, and what surgery she would have. I had spoken with the ailing woman the previous day, and she had mentioned none of this. Instead, her message came via the network.
Information disseminates quickly in a small community. Not long ago a train derailed in our town. Within minutes someone had called to fill me in on the details. Communication is just as fast in our church. Important news can spread through our entire congregation in less than an hour.
In one sense everyone in the church acts as a receiver. In the small church, everyone needs to be informed. But some, the key receivers, are more critical to innovation than others. Key receivers, the church's patriarchs and "tribal leaders," must be informed for change to occur.
In Dying for Change, Leith Anderson says that drawing your church's informal organizational structure (not its formal organizational chart) can help identify where real authority lies in the congregation:
"My favorite drawing of an informal organization featured a large oval in the middle of the page surrounded by many dots. In the middle of the oval was the name 'Ralph.' No doubt who was in charge of how that church operated! Even though there was a constitution and by-laws with elections and officers, nothing happened without Ralph's approval."
The former elder who called me the morning of the offering was also the man waiting at the parsonage when my wife, Jane, and I first arrived at Valley Chapel. As we talked, I sensed he expected his opinion to carry weight with the pastor. After welcoming us, he told me about a hospital call I needed to make. We hadn't even unpacked the truck yet! He was a key receiver.
Key receivers can provide invaluable aid. They are the ones most willing to give feedback and perspective, helping us see potential changes from the church's point of view. They can teach us the church's history, customs, and rituals. Their perspective enables us to frame our communication to address congregational fears and concerns.
Listening
I tend to view communication as a one-sided event. I'm concerned with getting my message across. But when that's my exclusive concern, I turn others off. My willingness to listen is critical to church communication.
In seminary I asked one of my professors to meet with me over lunch and discuss a problem. During our conversation he kept glancing around the room. Colleagues and students greeted him, and he waved in return. When I was done, he made a few comments and went back to his office.
Although his advice was probably good, I found it hard to accept because he hadn't listened, which signaled to me that he didn't care. I never asked for his advice again.
The real McCoy
Some compare the small church to a tribal society, where communication is primarily relational. Despite the authority of his office, the pastor must build relationships before expecting to be heard.
To do that, I learned I have to identify with my people. I never wore a baseball cap until I moved to Green Valley, where a cap is considered standard attire for the well-dressed male. I began sporting a Detroit Tigers cap.
Recently, however, one member gave me a John Deere cap like he wore.
"If you're going live here," he said, "you can't be wearing that Detroit cap all the time."
It was his way of saying, "Now that you live with us, we want you to be one of us." That John Deere cap, and the relationships that go with it, may do more to help the communication in my church than any newsletter we publish or sermon I preach.
In a small church, communication is more than information; it's concern, it's respect, and it's belonging.
– John Koessler
Valley Chapel
Green Valley, Illinois
Summer/93 LEADERSHIP 85
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
