(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Your Congregation's Inner Life." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Your Congregation's Public Profile.")

Your Congregation's Inner Life: Congregational Organizations

You need to probe each of the other routes in a similar manner. The organizational route, as another example, opens out into the congregation's administrative, social, and missionary activities. The groups mentioned in the bulletin define relationships that shape the larger character of the congregation.

The elected members of the Council function, along with the pastor, as the official leaders of the congregation. Their meetings and minutes provide rich resources for people watching. Who wields the power? What kind of authority is most respected—spiritual, familial, professional, economic? How are decisions made—by consensus, by majority vote, by ratification of conclusions reached elsewhere? What kinds of issues are debated here, and which ones are avoided? What have been the major controversies faced in the Council's meetings, and how are conflicts resolved? How have the Council's role and character changed over time? When you are involved in organization watching, it is especially important to note the discrepancies between official descriptions of organizational behavior and the way things actually work.

On the other hand, the women's organization most likely has functioned quite differently from the Council. It will be important for you to identify the distinctive roles and contributions of this organization, for often these groups have allowed women to express their creativity and leadership when the official channels of the congregations were for men only. Often, women's organizations have supplied the benevolent and financial energy that expanded congregational horizons at the same time that they made possible new patterns of care and support for members. Watch for ways that these groups raised extra funds to accomplish tasks that the official congregational budget could not include. New ministries frequently begin in these organizations and later become established parts of the congregation's ministry.

There is a story in every organization that exists or has existed in your congregation. The ebbs and flows of the various youth groups, the sudden emergence of a new support group or social ministry committee are signs that members are trying to express their faithfulness to the gospel and to do justice and love mercy. At the same time, the various activities of these groups carry within them all sorts of clues about the particular cultural and ethnic character of the church. The food served at church suppers and luncheons, the types of social activities chosen when people wanted to have a good time, even the decorations and china used, are all signs of the commitments and values of Faith Lutheran Church—and your own church.

As you move deeper into your congregation's life, keep asking how the congregation teaches and practices its faith. How are young people nurtured in the faith and prepared for leadership? Obvious answers: through Sunday school, vacation Bible school, and youth organizations. But young people also learn the faith from a much larger curriculum, the congregation's total tile. Children learn in worship, at funerals, in the discussions they overhear in the hallways, and in the family postmortems of worship services or meetings in the car on the way home. Adults are shaped not just by what happens in Bible class or new member classes. They are taught the values of a congregation in the way meetings are run and from the ways members treat each other. Powerful teaching goes on in pastoral care in the emergency room and in the conversation offered over coffee as one member helps another through the aftereffects of a divorce.