We are still building on the ideas developed on Monday and Tuesday’s blogs.
We will explore possible subject matter soon but there is another stage to this process that needs to be identified. You can do this yourself and you will gain some valuable information and probably some respect for your willingness to listen to your congregation. However, if you are going to work with your your identified colleagues, it will be important to inform your respective congregations what you are doing. As you will see as you develop the questions, unless they were prepared ahead of time, it would be very uncomfortable for a member of your congregation to receive a call from a pastor of another congregation who began asking questions about your congregation.
The advantage of this preparation is that it can also build a sense of anticipation withing your congregation. My suggestion is that you inform the congregation that you and two or three of your neighboring pastors are working together to explore ways that you can all build healthier congregations. Then explain that you have asked Rev. ?? to call members of your congregation as you will be calling members of his or her congregation to gather answers to a set of questions that have been prepared. Also let them know that you will share the information about your congregation with them when the study is complete. (As an aside, this would make an excellent Doctor of Ministry thesis.)
Next, send a letter to the identified people within your congregation providing them a set of the questions and asking them for their support in this project. Having the questions ahead of time allows time for reflection and more considered answers.
Once each of you has made your phone calls and recorded the responses, you will need to gather to discuss the results. While you each have promised to share the results with your congregation, there could be some fun and benefit to having your congregations gather together for a celebratory event in which you shared significant findings on all the congregations together.
Tomorrow we will begin to explore the types of questions that you might want to ask.
