What makes a congregation vital? Often this question arises in congregational life out of the need or the opportunity to respond to something specific: what makes a vital youth ministry? What makes a vital staff team? What makes a vital worship service?
But sometimes this question arises from a broader point of view. Sometimes congregational leaders find themselves asking the bigger question of what vitality looks like taken as a whole. What are the necessary and essential pieces in congregational vitality? Of the many things drawing our attention, which are essential? Often a visioning team, a long-range planning committee, or a leadership transition team asks itself this second level of question. The moments when a congregation finds space for these questions are precious, holy moments.
Their importance may be understood by referring to Ronald Heifetz’s concept of "balcony work." Leadership teams need the time and space to metaphorically go the balcony for a wider view of their work. Asking the larger question of congregational vitality—attempting to look at it as a whole—can be part of this work.
Another way of understanding the importance of this larger question about vitality—what it looks like as a whole—is through the emerging field of appreciative inquiry. This discipline holds that a key role of leadership is deciding where to turn people's attention and that organizations are better served by focusing on building health than by focusing on solving problems.
Yet, while larger questions about congregational vitality are important, this does not mean that there is a simple answer. Indeed, attempting to reduce vitality to a simple formula can be counterproductive. "Congregational vitality," like good human nutrition, may require many different elements. It may require different things in different circumstances. General truths about congregational vitality may not be the most important truths in any specific situation. And congregations that focus on congregational vitality "generally" may be avoiding the tensions in more specific questions: what is essential here and now to our vitality? How is God calling us at this time and in this place? Sometimes turning to "experts" or "current research" can be a way of avoiding these more difficult discussions.
Factor Approaches
These caveats aside, the larger question of congregational vitality remains important. A major empirical research project that has attempted to answer this question lies behind Christian Schwarz’s "Natural Church Development" method. Schwarz’s team has surveyed congregations in diverse situations and from diverse theological backgrounds. They claim that the essentials of congregational vitality can be boiled down to eight. He recommends that congregations assess which of these qualities is weakest and that they focus their attention on strengthening this quality. Congregational vitality is like a barrel that only can hold water up to the height of its shortest stave. Vitality increases by identifying the shortest stave and lengthening it.
This theory and methods that arise from it have worked well for many congregations, especially those looking for a way to focus their attention. If a congregation is asking "which of our many challenges should first receive our attention?" this method can produce an answer. But this method has also received a variety of critiques, including critiques of its assumptions about models of ordained leadership and theological orientation. Stated positively, "Natural Church Development" most clearly applies to mainline to moderately evangelical Christian churches led by ordained ministers.
A further critique has been that Schwarz’s eight essentials derive from what its surveys say are correlates of numerical growth. Are all vital congregations growing? Growth in numbers is wonderfully easy to assess. Using this criterion exclusively can force a congregation to be honest with itself. And yet exclusive focus on this characteristic can be misleading. As an analogy: steady growth in weight and girth is a wonderful primary indicator for health in a baby but less so for someone of my age—fifty. Finally, the Natural Church Development recommendations concerning vitality contradict the wisdom of appreciative inquiry, which holds that it is better to focus on the positive than the negative. Natural Church Development can be implemented in a way that seems to recommend constant attention to weaknesses.
A partial alternative to the Natural Church Development analysis of vitality can be found in the work of Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce, growing out of the U.S. Congregations Survey. They have used their research to distill ten strength of congregations (Beyond the Ordinary: Ten Strengths of U.S. Congregations). Woolever and Bruce attempt to develop a view of vitality not based merely on numerical growth (for example, they consider the ability of congregations to retain young people). They are developing tools that allow congregations to assess and appreciate their strengths (not weaknesses) relative to other congregations. This approach attempts also to allow for a broader theological perspective, a broader understanding of congregational structure, and a broader definition of vitality than what correlates with numerical growth. The cost of this broader and perhaps empirically more substantial approach is that the guidance congregations can derive from this model is less clear.
Anne Michel of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Seminary recently published an excellent comparison of the U.S. Congregations and Natural Church Development approaches. See the Lewis Center's excellent newsletter, Leading Ideas.
Systems Approaches
The major alternatives to these factor-based approaches are general system-based views. General systems theory, originating in the thinking of Ludwig Bertalanffy in the first half of the twentieth century has a powerful effect on thinking about congregational life through the work of such organizations as the Alban Institute and through individuals like Peter Steinke and Edwin Friedman. A clear application of this thinking to congregational vitality comes in Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach. Key elements of this approach include the claim that health—or vitality—is an attribute of a system as a whole and not reducible to components or factors. Further, health is a dynamic balance that may look very different in different circumstances.
While these cautions against narrowing the understanding of health can feel less than helpful to congregations seeking specific guidance, advocates of the systems approach to such "health promoters" as a sense of purpose, clarity, an ability to appraise and manage conflict, and an ability to heal (see Healthy Congregations).
People like George Parsons and Speed Leas have produced tools enabling congregations to get on the balcony and obtain overall views of how their congregations function as whole systems. Their approach avoids the "comparative rating" of the factor models (see Understanding Your Congregation as a System).
The practical recommendations coming out of these systems approaches to congregational vitality are that general tools are best used as ways of turning the attention of a congregation towards the specifics of how their own congregation functions well and badly, not towards ratings or comparisons.
Beyond these factor approaches and systems approaches to congregational vitality one other type of approach needs to be mentioned: the single factor approach. While single-factor approaches are rarely directly advanced, they are often implicit in approaches that achieve great popularity with some congregational leaders. An example would be Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church. While Warren does not explicitly put forward an overall view of congregational vitality, he implies that it reduces to one factor, clarity of purpose. And the specific purpose Warren advocates is the Christian Great Commandment. While many cannot accept this theological narrowing, the power of this degree of focus—and the freedom it seems to deliver from the tension of choosing between arguably good priorities—cannot be underestimated.
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