Neutralize the Issues That Neutralize You

Advancing your aims in any working environment is a challenge today and it certainly is in the practice of ministry. I once participated in a citywide survey that asked me to list the essential factors in a pastor’s life that contribute to fruitfulness and effectiveness. I listed a number of items such as growing faith, personal initiative, vision, and people skills. Afterwards, I felt quite proud of my answers until I read that a friend in the same city had replied, “Able to handle all the stuff that comes at you!”

I thought, “He’s right! What was I thinking?”

While I was indeed thinking about qualities that make a big difference in ministry effectiveness for any of us, my friend was correct also. Ministry - and even life itself today – has a lot of things coming at you. So, how do you combine our two winning answers?

To move forward with new ideas and fresh initiative we must neutralize the factors that work to neutralize us!

• The pressure of present demand.  I suspect if you began this day without a “to do list,” no specific list of things to accomplish, you would find yourself busy all day. The phone will ring, someone will drop by wanting to talk, you will remember some deadline is past due, you hear the ping of a new email every few minutes, and so on.  You could go to work every day with no plan in mind and stay busy the whole day just reacting to what comes at you.  This is typical for most people in our culture. 

• The comfort of present demand. The truth is while there may be an uninterrupted flow of people and task demands on your life, you probably like it. You are accustomed to it and would not know what to do with your day without it. All of us get into routines that may or may not be particularly fruitful beyond the busyness of the moment. The routine itself becomes so comfortable that we lose the spark that initiates new vision and new ideas.

• The anxiety a new vision may produce. Ministry – indeed all of life – frequently presents us with the simple choice to move forward accomplishing a new vision, dream, or idea or hold back due to the anxiety that the new vision creates. You may need to phone a person with a request but the idea of the making the call makes you nervous. You may have to follow up with people who are so wrapped up in their own worlds that they aren’t getting back to you. Hence, the thought of constantly knocking on their doors puts you off, so you don’t do it. When you yield to the anxiety of bringing a new vision into reality, your motion is neutralized.

• Fatigue. As I travel around the country and ask the simple question, “How are you?" 

        The most common answer is, “Tired!”  

People are pushing it. For some it comes of the desire to do more or make more. For others, the difficulties of our economy mean new increased levels of coping. It is irrational to speak of transformational vision and considering new initiatives, concepts, and methods when you are so wiped out that the very idea of generating fresh initiative makes you nauseous.  

• Social Media. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and interactive websites, as well as texting and email are here to stay. Whether you enjoy using them or not, if you want to communicate with people you will have to make the jump to one or more of these forms. At the same time it is easy to find yourself checking Facebook or your email every hour or every few minutes.

For an interesting experience of one person who took a break from social media, check out http://news.yahoo.com/90-days-without-cell-phone-email-social-media-015300257.html.

What to do? The factors that may limit our fruitfulness, what is called “productivity” in the business world, are only going to grow in their intensity. Finding ways to manage them will move us from being neutralized to increasingly fruitful in our Lord’s vineyard.

• Perform a self-audit. All of us have different ways of handling these five issues that may neutralize our fruitfulness. Think through each of the issues in regard to the realities of your own life being as brutally honest as you can be. For instance, focus on taking care of yourself.  Get enough rest.  Take the weekly Sabbath to be with your Lord, family, and friends.  Work smarter, not harder.

Or, make social media a part of your day like mealtime.  Set a time, perhaps in early and late morning and late afternoon, and set a time limit.  As it has been said, “If you don’t control your calendar, your calendar will control you.”

Unlike New Year’s Resolutions that are often casually expressed and typically unaddressed, choose one of these issues and seek to rise above it.   

• Spend time with centering friends. It really helps to be supported and stimulated by a few others who are people of imagination, initiative, and loyalty. The Quakers speak of “centering down” as we re-center our lives around our Lord. Who are the people in your life who help you re-center – not only in your relationship with your Lord but in the ways you handle the issues that threaten to neutralize your capacity and that of your ministry to engage in new endeavor? Their primary role is to function as a backboard with whom you may bounce ideas and chew over problems. The idea is for you both to join together as a team in actual leadership.  They ask questions such as “Why not?” and “What if?” while encouraging you and helping you to bring a vision into reality. 

• Stay close to the Lord who loves you. The concept of Sabbath is a centering practice we see for God’s people throughout scripture. The core issue is simple. The demands of life today – and frankly the demands of life at any time in history – will always seek to crowd out the intimacy of our friendship with God. Yet it is that very friendship that has the greatest capacity to help us handle the pressure of present demand, to rise above it, overcome our anxieties, get the rest we need, and manage the social conventions of our day.

With Joy -

E. Stanley Ott

GPS and the Acts 16:5 Initiative's Principles

Not too long ago, I was driving somewhere I’d never been before.  I did not have a GPS, but I did have directions courtesy of Googlemaps.  I was doing fine for a while, but then, even though I was following the directions, I began to get the feeling that I had missed something.  That something wasn’t right.  Maybe there was a mistake in the directions I had.  Maybe I had missed a turn.  I kept checking the directions and I seemed to be following them, but I still had the feeling I was off-track.  The road I was on just didn’t look like I thought it should look.  It didn’t feel like I was making progress toward my destination.  It seemed to be taking longer than it should.  I was tempted to turn off on a road that seemed like it would get me where I was going faster.  But I resisted that urge and kept on following the directions I had. And just shortly after that, it became clear that the way I was going was the right way.  The directions I had were correct.  I just had to keep going, keep following them, even though it felt like maybe I wasn’t going the right way.

I think this happens sometimes when we are in the midst of engaging the principles and practices of Acts 16:5.  We have good directions.  The gatherings and manuals provide a GPS of sorts for the journey we embark upon when we begin the adventure of the Acts 16:5 Initiative.  But then we start to dream about what God wants to do in our church.  We get excited about the vision God gives us, and we begin to map out directions towards that vision.  We get a few Action Learning Teams working on opportunities and challenges we see around us.  

And then it happens:  we don’t feel like we are making progress toward the vision.  The way we are heading doesn’t look right, doesn’t feel right.  Maybe we had missed a turn.  Maybe our directions weren’t good.  And we begin to second-guess the directions and either turn back the way we came or turn onto another route.

When you get to this place—and you surely will get here at some point—let me offer you some advice:  Keep going!  Trust the directions—the principles and practices detailed for you in the manuals and the gatherings.   They have worked for many, many churches as tools for vitality and growth. 

Sometimes God does have to ‘recalculate’ our directions because we’re working with a faulty map.  But very often we have a good map, but we fail to trust that map, a map that—if we continue to follow it, in spite of how it looks or how we feel or how difficult the route—will get us to where God wants us to go.

So take the adventure God has for you!  And trust the directions.  They will lead to vitality and renewal and new possibilities in your church and community.

Wishing you JOY for the journey!

Kathi Busch

God's Vision: Seeing What He Is Doing in Our Midst

I often return to the first shift concerning vision and expectation that Stan Ott talks about in the Acts 16:5 Initiative and in his book, Twelve Dynamic Shifts for Transforming Your Church.  The reason I keep going back is because I need to be reminded to “see” what God is doing in our midst.  In my personal experience, and in the experience of many I interact with across the denomination, what we imagine in our mind’s eye is sometimes not a very encouraging picture.  The first time Dr. Ott talked about having this kind of vision, I am embarrassed to say that it was like a light bulb that lit up in my mind.  Why hadn’t I thought of asking God for a vision?  Why hadn’t I thought of praying for a vision?  And, much worse, why didn’t I have much of a vision at all?

“How you picture that future has a great deal to do with what will happen by God’s grace.  Imagine your church as a vibrant, transformational fellowship that pulses with life and energy.  How would it look?  How would it feel?” (Ott 25).

How would your church look?  Where does God take your imagination as you dream, pray, and envision the liveliness of your community of faith? 

Personally, as I began to dream about the church where I serve, I started seeing people interacting with energy and with smiles on their faces.  I began to see people who were studying the word of God and were moved by their love of Christ to share it with people in their lives.  The picture kept coming to my mind of people being the hands and feet of Christ as they left our doors, spreading joy out into the community.  A while back, a mother and daughter I had known in a previous church came to visit.  After the service they commented on how lively our congregation is.  Could it be that God was fulfilling the vision, and it took someone from outside to help me see it?

The Dr. Ott’s second question above is equally important.  How would your church feel in a transformational situation?  Answering this question well might take real imagination.  How do the hands we clasp during the passing of the peace feel?  How hard or soft is the chair or pew?  Is the fabric covering it smooth?  Who is sitting next to you?  What does the music “feel” like?  Does it wash over the congregation with notes of warmth and harmony? Is the music lively and energy generating?  Is it like listening to angels singing?  Do you find yourself thanking God when the music elevates like a prayer?    What words of inspiration and faith does the preacher say that lifts your hope to a higher plane?  How do those words “feel”?  What does holding the elements in communion feel like?  Is the bread soft or like a cracker?  Is it wine or grape juice?  How do they taste?    One could walk through every element in the life of the congregation and imagine what it feels like.  If you do this exercise and what you find is not very uplifting, perhaps that is the very place your prayer life and God’s vision need to focus.  Can you imagine it even if it is not happening right now?

I invite you to form a prayer team or ask another person to join you in this work of imagination.  Working through you, God has the ability to do powerful things.  “Remember, ministry begins as an act of faith in God”  (Ott 27).  And may it be so!

In Christ,


Anne Clifton Hebert

A Transformational Defining Vision, Part Three

In Part One of this series we looked at how your personally utilize your congregation's Defining Vision.  Part Two examined how ministry teams might better use their Defining Vision.

In this third installment concerning the vision of glorifying God, making disciples, and meeting human need, you are invited to reflect on the questions from a big-picture view of your congregation.  One overall question to ask is: Do you believe your congregation generally knows what the vision is?  Could most of the participants in your community of faith speak the words by heart?  From the viewpoint of standing on a balcony looking at your congregation as a whole, how much of your life together is driven by this vision?  Here are questions divided into the parts of the statement:

In Your Congregation:

            1)  How are you doing as a congregation in glorifying God?  If Christians don’t

                        only exist for themselves in a church, who does your church need to be

                        thinking about in terms of worship?  Who is not in worship that you are

                        called to reach?  Does your church need to offer something in the area of

                        worship that you do not offer at this time?  And in terms of your current

                        worship services, are they planned and executed as well as they could be? 

                        Could they be improved?

            2)  How are you doing as a congregation in making disciples?  Who do you

                        know who is new to faith in Christ and how is the church helping them in

                        their faith journey?  What is your congregation’s vision of what mature

                        disciples ought to look like?  Are you being called to be more intentional

                        about helping people get there? 

            3)  How does your congregation meet human need?  Do you sufficiently help the

                        community of faith to know they are “sent” to do Christ’s work and mission

                        in the world?  Are there fewer ways that you could serve in order to be more

                        effective?  Who asks the hard questions in your congregation about what

                        God wants your church to be doing and to not to be doing in mission? 

                        What service to others for Christ brings your congregation great joy?

Perhaps you might have your Acts 16:5 Team or your session focus on some of these questions this fall.  As I said in the first blog entry of the series, vital and energized people create vital and energized churches!  That is what God has called us to be and d0.  I hope the focus on your vision will help your congregation become more focused in your life together and in your work for Christ.

In Christ,

Anne Clifton Hebert

Transformational Defining Vision, Part Two

In Part One of this series, we examined how you utilize a Defining Vision in your personal life.

In the second of this series concerning the vision, to glorify God, make disciples, and meet human need, I ask you to consider how your ministry teams and groups fulfill the vision.  What do your teams/groups consider to be their part in making this God-given vision a reality?  As a suggestion, take these questions to your next meeting and answer them together.  Another possibility is that you send them out ahead of time and ask people to come prepared to discuss them.  Groups might include older adult ministry groups, choirs, the session, the diaconate, men’s ministry groups, small groups, Presbyterian Women, prayer groups, your youth group, and your Church School classes.  How are the groups in your church reflecting the vision?

In Ministry Teams and Groups:

            1)  How does the ministry team/group in which you participate worship God? 

                        Does the team take time to do a Word, Share, Prayer?  Do you do more than a

                        quick opening prayer and a short devotion?  Are you deepening your

                        love of God together in a worshipful way?

            2)  How is your ministry team/group preparing disciples?  Do you plan activities and

                        experiences in the arena in which you lead to help people in your church

                        and/or community know God?  Has the discipleship of your own team or group

                        deepened?  Do you feel you know members of your team in a deeper

                        way in terms of faith and not just in terms of the work your team/group tries

                        to accomplish?  Are you helping others be included in your discipleship?

            3)  How is your ministry team/group meeting human need?  In what part of the life of

                        your ministry team or group are you reaching out to others and making a

                        difference in the world for Christ?

In order to help create vital teams and groups, our call is to be intentional.  The vision helps a church or organization have a common thread through all its ministry.  May God guide you as you explore these expressions of faith for your church’s teams and groups.

In Christ,


Anne Clifton Hébert